About What I Like About Me
HERE LIES MAISIE MARTIN,
DEAD FROM EMBARRASSMENT,
AGED SIXTEEN.
The last thing Maisie Martin thought she’d be doing this summer is entering a beauty pageant.
Not when she’s spent most of her life hiding her body from everyone.
Not when her dad is AWOL for Christmas and her best friend starts going out with the boy she’s always loved.
But Maisie’s got something to prove. And she’s not going to let anything or anyone – including herself – hold her back.
‘Funny and heartfelt. I loved it.’ Melina Marchetta
‘I wish I’d read this when I was fifteen – it would’ve changed everything.’ Claire Christian
‘Teens are gonna LOVE this book. What a sweet coming-of-age tale.’ Clementine Ford
Contents
Cover
About What I Like About Me
Dedication
Chapter 1: Friday, 15 December
Chapter 2: Saturday, 16 December
Chapter 3: Sunday, 17 December
Chapter 4: Monday, 18 December
Chapter 5: Tuesday, 19 December
Chapter 6: Wednesday, 20 December
Chapter 7: Thursday, 21 December
Chapter 8: Friday, 22 December
Chapter 9: Saturday, 23 December
Chapter 10: Sunday, 24 December
Chapter 11: Monday, 25 December
Chapter 12: Tuesday, 26 December
Chapter 13: Wednesday, 27 December
Chapter 14: Thursday, 28 December
Chapter 15: Friday, 29 December
Chapter 16: Saturday, 30 December
Chapter 17: Sunday, 31 December
Chapter 18: Monday, 1 January
Chapter 19: Tuesday, 2 January
Chapter 20: Wednesday, 3 January
Chapter 21: Thursday, 4 January
Chapter 22: Friday, 5 January
Chapter 23: Saturday, 6 January
Chapter 24: Sunday, 7 January
Chapter 25: Thursday, 9 February
Acknowledgments
About Jenna Guillaume
Copyright page
For my gran, who taught me to love stories.
For my mum, who told me to write my own.
And for Chris, who kept asking for more.
Friday, 15 December
3 things I discovered today
1. Ms Singh is a sadistic sumbitch who thinks it’s a great idea to assign homework over the last summer holidays we’ll ever experience in high school.
Source: This journal, which I’m supposed to write my ‘discoveries’ in every damn day, complete with sources and explanatory notes, like I have so much time for that. All because my English teacher thinks school should be about ‘so much more than prescribed texts’. As though forcing teenagers to keep a ‘discovery journal’ is gonna teach us profound life lessons, like some carpe bloody diem crap, when really the only thing we want to discover is each other’s bodies.
2. Growing up bites the big one if this is the kind of BS you have to put up with.
Source: When I whinged about this homework to Mum, she rolled her eyes and said that committing to responsibilities is a part of growing up; ‘Look at your father, working his butt off this summer while you’re relaxing yours on the beach.’
Which is extremely annoying for several reasons: the first being that Mum and Dad have been arguing non-stop about Dad working through the holidays, so it’s not like she’s happy about it; the second being that I can’t even vent without Mum getting a dig in about my ‘tendency to give up when things get difficult’; and the third being that it’s not as if writing in this thing every day OVER SUMMER is actually a responsibility that matters, like it’s going to change my life, and when I’m an adult and living on my own I’m going to get to the end of each day, sit down with my glass of wine and handwrite in a Moleskin notebook: ‘Dear Diary, today I discovered that the uni degree I spent four years and $17,000 on is absolutely useless and never going to get me a job, so I guess I’m going to become a checkout chick at Coles after all.’ Yeah. Right.
3. The ideal texture of Minties is when they’re about eleven months old.
Source: The half-empty packet of Minties I discovered in the front pocket of my suitcase. The Minties have gone all gooey and have retained their delicious minty flavour without breaking every last one of my teeth.
*
I’m never actually going to hand this in. Can you imagine?
‘Oh, Maisie, I really liked the part where you called me a sadistic sumbitch; you showed some deep insight there. Forget about doing coursework for the rest of the year, because this is so damn good you’re getting full marks on everything’ – Ms Singh, never.
‘Maisie Martin, you are on afternoon detention for the rest of the year and your mother is getting a phone call’ – Ms Singh, probably.
But honestly, after all the crap adults give you about appreciating your youth and embracing the best years of your life and blah blah blah, do they actually help you to do that? No. It’s: ‘Maisie, you’ve got to do this homework!’ ‘Maisie, this year will decide your future!’ ‘Maisie, should you really be eating that?’ ‘Maisie, I can’t come to Cobbers Bay this summer, and you’re going to spend three weeks without an ally against your mother, who is perpetually disappointed in you, and your sister, who thinks she’s much better than you, and your sister’s new girlfriend, who is probably even more perfect than she is, and life’s a bitch and then you die.’
Okay, so my dad didn’t really say that last bit, just the bit about not coming to the Bay, but he may as well have said the rest. He’s breaking a fourteen-year tradition, all because the newspaper he works for decided to launch some ‘digital rebranding strategy’ in the new year, and so he won’t be getting a month off like he normally does. It’s just complete garbage if you ask me. (Which no one ever does.)
At least one good thing came out of Dad ditching me: Mum’s letting my brilliant, beautiful, best-friend-in-the-world Anna come to ‘keep me company’ (read: keep me quiet). Anna also got ditched by a parent for the holidays (her mum is going overseas with her boyfriend), PLUS she happened to have her heart broken last week, so it worked out great.
Wait, that came out wrong . . . What I meant to say was, Anna needs a distraction because she’s upset with her mum and she doesn’t talk to her dad and she found out via text message that her (now ex-)boyfriend, Dan the Dickhead, was cheating on her. Luckily I, her most excellent best friend, am able to provide an all-expenses-paid trip to a luxury resort in an idyllic seaside town. (Okay, it’s not a luxury resort – more like a two-bedroom cabin in a cheesy caravan park – but the rest is basically true.) It’s win-win really, because Anna gets her distraction and I get my ally. Except for the part where Anna is heartbroken; that’s less ‘win’ and more ‘complete suckage’. But I’ll put her back together again, even if it takes me all summer.
Which means I’m NOT going to write in this ridiculous journal every day. I’m only doing it right now because a) Mum told me she wants to see that I’ve done it before bed, and b) it beats packing, which I’m also supposed to be doing. But anything beats packing.
Ugh. I really should pack.
Bye, Discovery Journal. I’d say you were good while you lasted, but that would be a lie and I really try never to lie. At least, not to inanimate objects.
Saturday, 16 December
1 thing I discovered today
1. My mother is a hell demon determined to destroy my life.
Source: She’s actually going to make me write in this bloody journal every day. She said she’s going to check it every morning! WHILE WE’RE ON
HOLIDAYS. This is what happens when your mum is a teacher. She always sides with her own kind. Oh, she’s promised not to read what I write, just confirm that I have written something, like that makes her a saint instead of a hell demon. But I know her true form, and it breathes fire. And because I don’t plan on being burned by anything other than the sun this summer, I’ll have to do as she says. That doesn’t mean I’m going to write anything worth handing in, though. Ha ha! I’ll show my mother and Ms Singh in one foul swoop. (Fowl swoop? Fell swoop?!)
*
Hi, Discovery Journal. Fancy meeting you again. Yeah. I didn’t think this would happen either. I thought we were kaput. Dunzo. Finished. But my mother has other ideas, and I used up a lifetime’s worth of defying her in a single act (ONE FELL SWOOP?!) when I quit dancing, so I’m essentially doomed to do whatever she says until I’m at least eighty-four years old or she dies, whichever comes first. (My money is on the former; my mother, as I have already mentioned, is a hell demon and will probably live forever.)
But I’m a guerrilla freedom fighter (NOT gorilla, which I learned the hard way in history last year, whoops), and I can resist in my own small ways. For example, my mother told me I have to write in this book every day, but she didn’t tell me what to write. Therefore I will now fill it with utter nonsense. Watch me go.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah di blah blah blah blah blah lalala lalala lalalala my hand is getting kind of tired to be honest blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Mum is watching me. She thinks I’m actually doing my homework. Ha ha! Hahahahahaha!
And the crowd goes wild! *Clap clap clap clap* . . . Hey, remember that rhyme?
My mother, your mother lives down the street, 18/19 Marble Street, and every night they have a fight and this is what they say: ‘Girls are sexy made out of Pepsi, boys are rotten made out of cotton.’
Question: how does being made out of Pepsi make one sexy? Because I have drunk my fair share of Pepsi, and let me tell you, I am most definitely not what you’d call sexy. Anna, on the other hand, never touches the stuff and she is a certified Hot Girl™. You know: the kind of girl who oozes sexiness, who drips confidence, who makes guys do that cartoon eyes-popping-out-of-their-heads-tongues-falling-out-of-their-mouths thing whenever she walks past, who is just so completely herself and has a killer face and a rockin’ bod to boot. Don’t ask me why she’s friends with me. I’m basically the exact opposite of a Hot Girl™, despite the fact I was birthed by a Hot Girl™, who had already birthed another Hot Girl™, and then somehow wound up with me. It’s like in that old movie Twins, which I’ve watched with Dad a hundred times, where Arnold Schwarzenegger gets all the good genes and Danny DeVito is the leftover sludge. My sister Eva is Arnold Schwarzenegger and I’m the DeVito sludge.
Anyway. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
That should do it.
Sunday, 17 December
2 things I discovered today
1. I’m not as good at guerrilla freedom fighting as I thought I was.
Source: All those ‘blahs’ yesterday caught Mum’s eye and she threatened to read this whole journal cover to cover if I didn’t start taking it seriously. ‘Privacy comes with trust, and you have to earn trust, Maisie. And don’t roll your eyes at me.’ *insert eye roll here* Anyway, I have to stop with the nonsense and at least look like I’m doing this properly. So the substance can be nonsense, just not the form. Hey, look, I’m getting better at this already.
2. You know all those movies where teenagers have, like, THE SUMMER OF THEIR LIVES? This summer is probably not going to be that.
Source: Everything that has happened since yesterday.
*
Here we are again, Discovery Journal! Can I call you DJ, since we’re going to be such good friends and all? You can call me Maisie. Some people call me Maise, pronounced ‘maze’, because I’m totally a puzzle you need to explore before you can get to the treasure hidden inside. Okay, that’s not true – it’s just short for Maisie, duh. Mum calls me Missy-May, god knows why, and Dad calls me Eminem, because he thinks he’s hilarious. (Don’t tell him, but he kinda is sometimes.) You know what? Call me whatever you want. Or, better yet, don’t call me anything, because you’re an empty journal and can’t actually speak.
Of course, I could fill you with words that would certainly enable you to say something.
But what should those words be?! As aforementioned (a great word to use in any assignment to give the impression you know what you’re talking about, btw), Mum cottoned on to my cunning plan yesterday. Which means today has to be different. I guess I could go into the also-aforementioned Everything That Has Happened Since Yesterday. That’d take up some space alright.
To start with, most of yesterday was pretty boring. We were in the car for a lot of the day – Mum, Anna and I. (Eva’s flying up from Melbourne, where she’s studying dance – like she hasn’t already been doing that her whole damn life. She’ll arrive in a few days with her new girlfriend Bess. Just my luck they’re not spending Christmas with her family.) Anyway, we were in the car for hours and hours, and Mum kept trying to talk to us about school and the future and, worst of all, boys, so Anna put her earphones in and pretended to be asleep, while I just shot Mum death stares until she stopped talking and started sending me death stares back.
We’re pretty good at speaking in death stares. Here’s the rough translation:
Me: Mum, stop trying to talk to us like you’re our friend. You’re not our friend.
Mum: I’m trying to make everyone comfortable.
Me: Well you’re making everyone UNcomfortable.
Mum: Don’t be so disrespectful, Maisie Martin. If you carry on behaving like this I’ll lock you in the house all summer and you won’t get to have any fun.
Me: I dare you to do just that. It’d be lovely, to be honest. I could watch Netflix all day.
Mum: I have just now realised that you would love that, and have decided a more fitting punishment would be to force you to stay by my side all summer and never let you out of my sight. Hey, we could get bikini waxes together! Perfect!
Me: You wouldn’t.
Mum: I would.
Me: . . .
Mum: . . .
Me: *looks away, defeated*
Mum: *smiles smugly, victorious*
Anna: *snores because she is no longer pretending to be asleep and now really is asleep*
Yeah. That’s pretty much how the eight-hour car ride went. Dad messaged a few times along the way to say he was missing us already and he wished he was there. It just made Mum swear under her breath.
Then we reached the Bay and things went from boring to a little too exciting all at once. And by exciting, I mean absolutely mortifying.
Anna, looking adorably bedraggled after the long trip – as opposed to me, who looked bedraggled in the sense that I resembled something that had been caught in the wheel and dragged along behind the car the whole time – headed straight inside with her bag. I helped Mum unload the kitchen sink and various other supplies she’d insisted on bringing (not literally the kitchen sink, though it may as well have been – Mum’s mantra is ‘always be prepared’, but she brought so many water bottles along it’s like she’s a doomsday prepper). Once Mum was occupied putting everything in just the right place in the cabin, I went back out to get my own bag. By this stage, Anna had already dumped her stuff on the top bunk in the little room we’re sharing and was now sitting on the table on the verandah, staring past the row of cabins in front of ours to the ocean. I cracked a joke about Mum’s excessiveness, but Anna didn’t even crack a smile. She’d been in a bad mood all day and it seemed it was going to take something drastic to lift it.
When I saw the
box of tampons next to my bag in the boot of the car, I got an idea. It seemed brilliant at the time, but it was probably the silliest I’ve ever had, and that’s saying something.
(I can’t believe I’m going to write this down.)
Hidden from Anna’s view by the open boot, I opened the box and retrieved two tampons.
(Oh god I wish I could turn back time.)
I shoved one tampon in my nostril.
(Why why why did I do this?!)
I shoved the other tampon in my other nostril.
(Oh please, won’t some lightning strike me dead on the spot.)
I cackled wildly.
(It all happened so fast.)
I ran around the car towards Anna.
(And yet it was somehow also in slow motion.)
‘Hey, Annaaaaa,’ I sing-songed to get her attention.
(I’m dying, I’m dying.)
I blew out really hard through my nose, and one tampon went flying.
(I’m dead.)
I froze, one tampon still in my nose, as I watched the other ricochet off the beautiful, perfect arm of none other than Sebastian Lee.
(Here lies Maisie Martin, dead from embarrassment, aged sixteen.)
I need a moment.
*
Okay, I’m back. My whole body is cringing but I’m here. I may as well see this thing through.
Where was I? Oh right, the most humiliating moment of my life. The Tampon Incident, starring Sebastian Lee and my cold, dead corpse.
The thing about Sebastian Lee is he’s the most beautiful guy you’ll ever see. He’s got this glorious dark hair that you just want to reach out and touch, and this incredible jawline that you just want to reach out and touch, and these spectacular shoulders that you just want to reach out and touch, and . . . well, you get the picture.
The other thing about Sebastian Lee is I’ve known him my whole life. Our mums did their teaching degrees together and have been besties ever since, but they don’t get to see each other much, because the Lees moved to Queensland when I was two and we stayed in New South Wales. Mum and Laura made a pact to spend the holidays together every year, and that’s how each family wound up with a cabin in Cobbers Bay. Which is how Sebastian and I ended up spending summer after summer swimming naked together and boogie boarding and building sandcastles and playing Star Wars (he was Han Solo, I was Chewbacca) (also I should note the naked part stopped when we were, like, four) (damn). We always had fun, no matter what we were doing. Sebastian could turn anything into a game.
What I Like About Me Page 1